This was a big week for Ruby with the launch of Ruby v2.0 on February 24. There’s lots of new features, including a new way to extend Classes using Module#prepend, keyword arguments, a new regex engine, and more.

There's a new gem called Artoo, self-described as a micro framework for robotics. It's a simple DSL that makes it easy to connect up with popular microcontrollers, such as the Arduino, AR Drone 2.0, and Sphero gaming interface. The authors also expect to add support for new microcontrollers later.

"count()" operations in SQL can get a little slow on big tables. Mario Visic has released a new gem that adds support to the ActiveRecord::Relation class for caching the result of "count()" operations.

An already controversial new feature in Ruby 2.0 is Refinements, which aims to replace monkey-patching. Refinements are included as an experimental feature, so don’t be surprised if their implementation changes before a more stable release shows up. They're an exciting new feature with a lot of potential, though!